Israel and the Palestinians

Dousing the candle

So much for the good beginning

SELDOM has a glimmer darkened so quickly. Last week, George Bush's personal commitment to a Middle Eastern peace seemed to give Israeli and Palestinian peace-seekers at least a chance to try again. This week, as a bomber slaughtered a busful of people in Jerusalem, that chance looks dead.

The descent to blood started days after the Aqaba summit, with the weekend's concerted attack by militants from three Palestinian groups—Hamas, Islamic Jihad and al-Aqsa—which killed four Israeli soldiers in Gaza. In reply came Israel's attempted assassination of Abdel-Aziz Rantisi, Hamas's top political leader. For that, Hamas vowed revenge: hence the bomb, and at least 16 people blown to pieces.

Is there any way out? Maybe not. Mahmoud Abbas, the leading peace-seeker on the Palestinian side, is terribly vulnerable. He understands very well that he must end Palestinian violence against Israelis if America is to stay engaged in the effort to end Israel's occupation of Palestinian land. He is repeatedly undermined by Palestinians who do not share his logic. What he may not have expected was that he would be done down even more thoroughly by Ariel Sharon, his fellow peace-seeker, whose hand he had just been shaking at Aqaba.

The assassination attempt crushed Mr Abbas's effort to persuade the Islamist movement to agree to a ceasefire. Dr Rantisi propagates extreme views but is a politician, not a fighter. The Israelis hold him guilty, correctly, of actively opposing current peace plans: last week, in Hamas's name, he attacked Mr Abbas for betraying the Palestinian cause at Aqaba, and suspended the ceasefire talks. They also claim, perhaps less correctly, that he was behind the attack on the soldiers.

In any event, Mr Abbas's only hope of bringing bloodshed to an end, a precondition for moving ahead on the road map, is to reach an accommodation with Hamas. A ceasefire had seemed extremely difficult but not entirely impossible, so long as Mr Abbas could deliver something worthwhile from Israel in return. The assassination bid made him out to be a patsy, someone regarded with contempt by his Israeli counterpart.

Even now, hopeless as it seems, some sort of agreement with Hamas offers the only remote prospect of a peaceful way forward. Without popular support, or political legitimacy, Mr Abbas simply does not have the power to send his security forces, weakened by Israeli attacks, to arrest Islamist or other militants. He might well not be obeyed.

Mr Bush's response to the assassination bid showed that he understands Mr Abbas's vulnerability, and the need to help him to do his job. In a rare rebuke to Israel, the president said that it would “make it more difficult for the Palestinian leadership to fight off terrorist attacks.” It would not, he added, help Israeli security. As if in answer to that warning came the bus bomb. The atrocity may have proved Mr Bush right, but it will have done nothing to soften his heart to the Palestinian cause.

Mr Sharon faces pressures of his own. Although the 15 settlement outposts that he has ordered dismantled are mostly uninhabited, the settler movement has responded angrily, threatening to create two new outposts for each one taken down. Mr Sharon must be seen to be tough on terrorism. And it is close to impossible for any Israeli government, let alone his, to trust in a “ceasefire” from a murderous organisation like Hamas. The fact is, there is no other way. Despite everything, Mr Abbas's troubled efforts to fashion such a ceasefire should be helped, not scorned.